I was thinking earlier last evening as I lit a fire in the
fireplace and watched the flames expand through the dry wood of my savings that
the Oaks, Maples, and Ash burn beautifully. The few logs of pulp wood that I have
cut down burn like damp leaves.
It’s been a late November cold where I live and tomorrow begins December. I border the Shawangunks and Catskill mountain ranges and I’m
nestled in a valley a little higher than the Hudson valley so my area gets an up-slope
frost and a biting chill when Canada sends us a north wind clipper.
And so I lite a fire. Fireplace fires always remind me of
life. The flames are the youth of being, the coals are brightness and heat of
middle age and the embers are the waning lights of age and memory.
Simplistic, of course, but an encouragement that wherever you
see the light, in youth, middle age or in old age, there is joy and the still
small spark of creation. I love it.
If you look at the wood before you put it into the chewing cauldron
of fire, you have a log of light and form from many years of growth. Stored
in the cellulous fibers are the heat of the sun, the substances of form from
soil nutrients and the nourishment of water. A gift of nature to humankind for
use as sustenance, structure and stored heat.
As I write this post my fire is nearly out. A few sparks
glow deep within the covering ash. Age is a lot like that. It’s not sad. It’s a
reality check to create while you can before your thoughts a hundred years from
now are no more than the dissipating smoke of a memory.
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